Good Day everyone.  Long time lurker, first time post.

Recently purchased a S90XS as an upgrade for my Roland XP-80 I’ve had for a while.  I am wondering about a potential capability of the S90.  I have looked through the manuals and the message boards here and do NOT believe I can do what I want, but thought I would double check.,

I have a Performance set up where I can play the keyboard and use the faders to control/mix four different sounds at once and on the fly. One set up might be

Channel 1 - Piano
Channel 2 - Rhodes
Channel 3 - DX7 EP
Channel 4 - Strings/Pad

That part is easy using the performance.  However, I would ALSO like to have a 5th (or even 6th) channel set up to play another voice (Clav, Bass, synth, etc) from an external MIDI controller on a different MIDI channel. 

This is where the problem lies I suppose:  If I choose a PERFORMANCE, I ONLY get 4 channels/voices, but I gain a LOT of flexibility, specifically in the mixing capabilities.  If I create a Multi, I can only play ONE channel at a time live, and select individual parts, but I cannot have 4 voice played from the S90XS simultaneously. 

I guess this post is simply a confirmation that I CANNOT have both abilities - having 4 parts at once AND the ability to control an additional internal sound from an external controller.

Thanks for any insights and suggestions!!

Justin L.

loozrrtuba - 04 February 2021 02:14 PM

Good Day everyone.  Long time lurker, first time post.

Recently purchased a S90XS as an upgrade for my Roland XP-80 I’ve had for a while.  I am wondering about a potential capability of the S90.  I have looked through the manuals and the message boards here and do NOT believe I can do what I want, but thought I would double check.,

I have a Performance set up where I can play the keyboard and use the faders to control/mix four different sounds at once and on the fly. One set up might be

Channel 1 - Piano
Channel 2 - Rhodes
Channel 3 - DX7 EP
Channel 4 - Strings/Pad

That part is easy using the performance.  However, I would ALSO like to have a 5th (or even 6th) channel set up to play another voice (Clav, Bass, synth, etc) from an external MIDI controller on a different MIDI channel. 

This is where the problem lies I suppose:  If I choose a PERFORMANCE, I ONLY get 4 channels/voices, but I gain a LOT of flexibility, specifically in the mixing capabilities.  If I create a Multi, I can only play ONE channel at a time live, and select individual parts, but I cannot have 4 voice played from the S90XS simultaneously. 

I guess this post is simply a confirmation that I CANNOT have both abilities - having 4 parts at once AND the ability to control an additional internal sound from an external controller.

Thanks for any insights and suggestions!!

Justin L.

I don’t have a S90X, but I’m wondering does it have a master mode, and can you assign the external synths to channels 5 & 6 and send the appropriate program change to get the sounds you want??

Or can you assign multiple parts to the same channel in Zones 1-3 and free up channels to be used for external synths in Zone 4?

I play Motif/Mox and in Master Mode there are a lot of techniques that let you mess around with channels/zones to external midi devices.  If S90XS allows you to assign channels and zones in Master mode there might be a way to get something different on channel 5 & 6????

Support article for S70XS/S90XS Master Mode:
http://files.keyfax.com/download/S90XS/XS_MasterMode.pdf

S70XS/S90XS manuals:
https://usa.yamaha.com/products/contents/music_production/downloads/manuals/index.html?l=en&c=music_production&k=s90+xs
Owner’s and Reference Manuals cover Master Mode operation.